Certified Somatic Educator
Pilates Teacher
Improvisation Dance Artist
SOMATIC EDUCATION is the use of sensory-motor learning to gain greater voluntary control of ones physiological process. It is "somatic" in the sense that the learning occurs within the individual as an internalized process.
In its purity, somatic education is self-initiated and self-controlled. However, somatic education has emerged during the twentieth century as a procedure whereby this internalized learning process is initiated by a teacher who stimulates and guides the learner through a sensory-motor process of physiological change.
Prior to the advent of this teacher-learner form of somatic education, the same self-transformatory events have been a commonplace of human history.
Before the twentieth century the closest approximation to teacher-learner somatic education was the work of shamans and Asian healers.
| The results of self-learning should not be understood as "miraculous," but as somatic. |
It is our task to achieve an understanding of the somatic realm in general -- and of somatic education in particular -- so that the mystery and the mythology will be dispelled. In this way, somatic education can become a discipline available to all humans. The salutary results of self-teaching, self-learning, self-healing, and self-regulation should not be understood as "miraculous," but as somatic: they are genetically-given capacities intrinsic to all human beings.
Thomas Hanna PHD
